Was Martin Luther King a Communist?

This writer does not question that the late, great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was deservedly one of the most monumental and pivotal figures of the 20th century. King's inspirational leadership, oratory, and profession of non-violence may have very well saved this nation from a race war. I am grateful that the Rev. Dr. King emerged as the most visible and influential leader of the civil rights movement as opposed to an advocate of violence such as Malcolm X or a radical communist.

No, the Rev. Dr. King was not a communist, however, he did business with communists and was influenced by them. While this is a delicate subject to broach, especially given the martyrdom and lionization of Dr. King to virtual sainthood status, the subject must nevertheless be broached for a better understanding of some of the darker forces that infiltrated and sabotaged an organically pro American, conservative, and Christian civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King surrounded himself with communists from the beginning of his career. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, formed in 1957 and led by Dr. King, also had as its vice president Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who was at the same time president of the Southern Conference Education Fund, an identified communist front according to the Legislative Committee on un-American Activities, Louisiana (Report April 13, 1964 pp. 31-38). The field director of SCEF was Carl Braden, a known communist agitator who also sponsored the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which counted as a member Lee Harvey Oswald, the communist assassin of President Kennedy. Dr. King maintained correspondence with Carl Braden. Also on the board of SCLC was Bayard Rustin, a known communist.

In 1957, Dr. King addressed the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn. which was originally called Commonwealth College until it was sited by the House Committee on un-American Activities as being a communist front (April 27, 1949). The committee found that Commonwealth, later the Highlander Folk School, was using religion as a way to infiltrate the African-American community by, among other techniques, comparing the texts of the New Testament to those of Karl Marx. Dr. King knew many of the known communists associated with the Highlander school.

In 1960, Dr. King hired Hunter Pitts O'Dell, a communist official to work at SCLC. According to the St. Louis Globe Democrat (Oct. 26, 1962) "A Communist has infiltrated the top administrative post in the Rev. Martin Luther King's SCLC. He is Jack H. O'Dell, acting executive director of conference activities in the southeastern states including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana." Dr. King fired O'Dell when this information emerged but rehired him as head of the SCLC New York office.

Dr. King was praised by communists and promoted by fellow travelers. Communist official Benjamin J. Davis, in the Worker (Nov. 10, 1963) describes Dr. King as "a brilliant and practical leader who articulates the philosophy of the Negro people, for direct non-violent mass action." The Worker article goes on to describe Dr. King as "The foremost advocate of the solution of social problems through nonviolent methods of mass action."

In his own words, Martin Luther King expresses a communist outlook in his book "Stride Toward Freedom" He states that "in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me even more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism has greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system…"

It's strikes me as sad that Dr. King, the most influential leader of the civil rights movement wasn't an advocate of the capitalism that was already leading to such great economic strides amongst African-Americans in his day. By advocating a "better distribution of wealth" he meant state control over the economy. He sneered at "the profit motive" without explaining why African-Americans shouldn't seek to profit to the best of their ability. These ideas would later on open the floodgates to radical African-American leaders such as Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, the Black Panthers, and the burning and looting of African-American neighborhoods, the institutionalizing of welfare programs, the perpetuation of poverty, the destruction of the African-American family, drugs, violence, racism, and crime.

In "Stride Toward Freedom" Dr. King states that "In short, I read Marx as I read all of the influential historical thinkers – from a dialectical point of view, combining a partial yea and a partial no…My readings of Marx convinced me that truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise…The Kingdom of G-d is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both."

By stating that he views things "from a dialectical point of view" Dr. King is thinking like communists such as Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. The dialectic always and can only lead to authoritarianism. Man cannot, for example, be half free and half slave, either he is free or he is a slave. Dr. King's imperious stand toward his own people would stand in contrast to an advocacy of genuine freedom, the development of self-rule, self-sufficiency, private ownership, and the accumulation of capital resulting from achievement. Dr. King was not advocating the American system of free market capitalism. Instead, he stood for a system that has stunted the growth of African-Americans as well as the rest of us.

Much remains to be said regarding the communist infiltration of the civil rights movement as a whole. The communists sought to use African-Americans as cannon fodder in their revolution by stoking hatred and racial division. Much blood and suffering is on the hands of these communist agitators. The story of how the left-wing predominantly white establishment promoted communists in the African-American community as a means of continuing an informal system of oppression also cries out to be told.

"Much remains to be said regarding the communist infiltration of the civil rights movement as a whole. The communists sought to use African-Americans as cannon fodder in their revolution by stoking hatred and racial division."

Yes, it has been known for years that Dr. King was uncomfortably close to the Communist enemies of all Americans. And the civil rights movement opened the gate to very bad forces who over the last forty years conducted an attack on America from within.

Civil rights, however, are something which are consistent with a conservative view of the Constituion (As opposed to the Eleanor Roosevelt's "Human Rights") Civil rights are and were something every American should expect to have guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, yet the marches, sit-ins and disruptions of the 1960s were necessary in order to secure those rights for many Americans.

To paraphrase FReeper rdb3, why was is it that a Dr. King was even necessary at that point in our history? In a perverse and unfortunate way the democrat segregationists like Byrd, Wallace et al. were one cause of the introduction of hard left politics into American life.

Do a Google Search on Martin Luther King and Communist and see what you find. the associations are much deeper then you indicate. BTW, Harry Belafonte, Castro and commie lover then and now, was King's bag man, collecting money in NY and bringing it down to King. The associations are there and they are real.

On Labor Day, 1957, a special meeting was attended by Martin Luther King and four others at a strange institution called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The Highlander Folk School was a Communist front, having been founded by Myles Horton (Communist Party organizer for Tennessee) and Don West (Communist Party organizer for North Carolina). The leaders of this meeting with King were the aforementioned Horton and West, along with Abner Berry and James Dumbrowski, all open and acknowledged members of the Communist Party, USA. The agenda of the meeting was a plan to tour the Southern states to initiate demonstrations and riots.

From 1955 to 1960, Martin Luther King's associate, advisor, and personal secretary was one Bayard Rustin. In 1936 Rustin joined the Young Communist League at New York City College. Convicted of draft-dodging, he went to prison for two years in 1944. On January 23, 1953 the "Los Angeles Times" reported his conviction and sentencing to jail for 60 days for lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion. Rustin attended the 16th Convention of the Communist Party, USA in February, 1957. One month later, he and King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC for short. The president of the SCLC was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The vice-president of the SCLC was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was also the president of an identified Communist front known as the Southern Conference Educational Fund, an organization whose field director, a Mr. Carl Braden, was simultaneously a national sponsor of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which you may have heard. The program director of the SCLC was the Reverend Andrew Young, in more recent years Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN and mayor of Atlanta. Young, by the way, was trained at the Highlander Folk School, previously mentioned.

Soon after returning from a trip to Moscow in 1958, Rustin organized the first of King's famous marches on Washington. The official organ of the Communist Party, "The Worker,- - openly declared the march to be a Communist project. Although he left King's employ as secretary in 1961, Rustin was called upon by King to be second in command of the much larger march on Washington which took place on August 28, 1963.

Bayard Rustin's replacement in 1961 as secretary and advisor to King was Jack O'Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O'Dell. According to official records, in 1962 Jack O'Dell was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA. He had been listed as a Communist Party member as early as 1956. O'Dell was also given the job of acting executive director for SCLC activities for the entire Southeast, according to the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat - -of October 26, 1962. At that time, there were still some patriots in the press corps, and word of O'Dell's party membership became known.

What did King do? Shortly after the negative news reports, King fired O'Dell with much fanfare. And he then, without the fanfare, "immediately hired him again- - as director of the New York office of the SCLC, as confirmed by the "Richmond News-Leader - -of September 27, 1963. In 1963 a Black man from Monroe, North Carolina named Robert Williams made a trip to Peking, China. Exactly 20 days before King's 1963 march on Washington, Williams successfully urged Mao Tse-Tung to speak out on behalf of King's movement. Mr. Williams was also around this time maintaining his primary residence in Cuba, from which he made regular broadcasts to the southern US, three times a week, from high-power AM transmitters in Havana under the title "Radio Free Dixie." In these broadcasts, he urged violent attacks by Blacks against White Americans.

During this period, Williams wrote a book entitled "Negroes With Guns." The writer of the foreword for this book? None other than Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also interesting to note that the editors and publishers of this book were to a man all supporters of the infamous Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

According to King's biographer and sympathizer David J. Garrow, "King privately described himself as a Marxist." In his 1981 book, "The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.", Garrow quotes King as saying in SCLC staff meetings, "...we have moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution.... The whole structure of American life must be changed.... We are engaged in the class struggle."

Jewish Communist Stanley Levison can best be described as King's behind-the-scenes "handler." Levison, who had for years been in charge of the secret funnelling of Soviet funds to the Communist Party, USA, was King's mentor and was actually the brains behind many of King's more successful ploys. It was Levison who edited King's book, "Stride Toward Freedom." It was Levison who arranged for a publisher. Levison even prepared King's income tax returns! It was Levison who really controlled the fund-raising and agitation activities of the SCLC. Levison wrote many of King's speeches. King described Levison as one of his "closest friends."

Google search? Of course, King has been smeared with the commie charge since the 1950s. Segregationists made extensive use of the Highlander photo though King never denied going to the school. Rosie Parks had also attended Highlander. I wonder why the King bashers here never bash Rosa Parks? Double standard?

As to the "Highlander is a Communist training school" the FBI was not, I repeat not, able to find any evidence to back up that claim. See footnote 37 in the following article by David Horowitz who also rejects this smear:

http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/american_quarterly/48.1horowitz.html

Now....did King have his vices. I am the first to admit that he went off the deep end when he embraced the leftist, pro-welfare Poor Peoples Movement. The early King (who voted for Ike) was a hard-hitting fighter for liberty, critic of Communism, and critic of relativism. I will post my King quote from 1957 which all those who favor the cardboard cutout theory of King chose to ignore.

The segreationists who defended *official* segregation in Montgomery and tried to smear him as a commie, however, are never criticized by the King bashers.

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